[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----CALIF., MISS.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 13



CALIFORNIA:

Without mercy


Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger once characterized his conflicted feelings
about the death penalty as a duel between his "Austrian brain and the
American brain." He recalled that capital punishment was an "absolute
no-no" in his native Austria.

On Monday, his "American brain" prevailed. He refused to get in the way of
the execution of 51-year-old Stanley Tookie Williams, the founder of the
Crips street gang and convicted killer of four people during two 1979
robberies.

Schwarzenegger scoffed at Williams' claims of innocence. He noted that
Williams' appeals have been "thoroughly reviewed" in the 24 years since
his conviction.

The governor was equally dismissive of Williams' talk of redemption. In
his 5-page rejection of the clemency petition, Schwarzenegger said "an
apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings" were
prerequisites of redemption. He suggested that Williams' attempt to plot
an escape before trial was evidence of guilt and "callous disregard for
human life." He even derided the argument that Williams' anti-gang
writings from prison -- including eight children's books on the subject --
were making a positive contribution to society.

Perhaps his "Austrian brain" would have recognized the value of keeping
Williams alive to offer a credible voice of warning to young people who
are vulnerable to the lure of gangs. Perhaps his immersion in American
culture has anesthetized him to concerns about the margin of error in this
nation's justice system.

Perhaps there was a time when Schwarzenegger might have at least delayed
the death of Stanley Tookie Williams until the California Assembly could
consider the merits of AB1121, which would impose a moratorium on capital
punishment while a commission assesses whether its application in this
state is "fair, just and accurate." The first hearing on that bill,
authored by Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood, is Jan. 10 -- one
week before the next scheduled execution in California.

But it's not the American way to wait. Regrettably, Schwarzenegger allowed
the execution to proceed. Williams was killed by lethal injection at 12:36
a.m. today.

(source: Editorial, San Francisco Chronicle)

***************

At the Gates of San Quentin


No buzzards were gliding overhead, but several helicopters circled, under
black sky tinged blue. On the shore of a stunning bay at a placid moment,
the state prepared to kill.

Outside the gates of San Quentin, people gathered to protest the impending
execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. Hundreds became thousands as the
midnight hour approached. Rage and calming prayers were in the air.

The operative God of the night was a governor. "Without an apology and
atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no
redemption," Arnold Schwarzenegger had declared. Hours later, a new
killing would be sanitized by law and euphemism. (Before dawn, a newscast
on NPR's "Morning Edition" would air the voice of a media witness who had
observed the execution by lethal injection. Within seconds, his on-air
report twice referred to the killing of Williams as a "medical
procedure.")

But at the prison gates, there were signs.

"The weak can never forgive."

"No Death in My Name"

"Executions teach vengeance and violence."

But for the warfare state - with the era of big government a thing of the
past except for police, prisons and the Pentagon - vengeance and violence
are rudiments of policy, taught most profoundly of all by the daily object
lessons of acceptance, passivity and budget.

The execution was scheduled for 12:01 a.m.

25 minutes before then, people outside the gates began to sing "We Shall
Overcome."

"We shall live in peace ..."

Overhead, the helicopters kept circling, high-tech buzzards.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," said one sign.

Elsewhere in the crowd, another asked: "Are we blind yet?"

At 7 minutes to midnight, it occurred to me how much the ritual countdown
to execution resembles the Doomsday Clock invented by atomic scientists
several decades ago to estimate the world's proximity to nuclear
annihilation.

>From the stage, speakers praised Williams' renunciation of violence, his
advocacy for nonviolence.

At 2 minutes before midnight, a TV news correspondent stood on the roof of
a white van, readying a report for the top of the hour. At midnight the
standup report began. It ended at 12:02 a.m.

A speaker called for a national moratorium on the death penalty in the
United States.

"No to Death Machine Careerism," a sign said.

"As you do unto the least of these, you do unto me," another sign said.

Full silence took hold at 12:24 a.m.

Then, an old song again. "... We shall ... overcome ... some ... day."

An announcement came at 12:38 a.m.; Stanley Tookie Williams was dead.

The country was no safer. Just more violent.

The sanctity of life was not upheld, just violated.

"It's over," said a speaker. "But it's not over."

>From San Quentin to Iraq, death is a goal of policy. In the name of murder
victims, the state murders. In the name of the fallen, more kill and fall.

(source: Editorial, Truthout.org; Norman Solomon is the author of the new
book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death)

****************

A Mute, But Disquiet, Exit for Williams


At 12:01 this morning, having exhausted all appeals, Stanley Tookie
Williams shuffled into San Quentin's death chamber, shackled at the wrist
and waist and escorted by four burly guards.

After he climbed onto a padded gurney, officers tied Williams down with
wide, black straps across his shins, thighs, waist and chest. His arms,
stretched out to the side, were secured with leather restraints.

At 12:03 a.m., 1 officers pulled on surgical gloves as another entered the
chamber with a plastic tub of supplies. Three minutes later, a needle was
thrust successfully home into Williams' right arm and connected to an
intravenous tube.

The rules, however, require a back-up in case one line should jostle loose
or fail. And it was here that the carefully choreographed execution turned
messy.

For 12 long minutes, a prison technician-her brow glistening with
sweat-poked the convict's muscular left arm again and again, searching for
a vein that would deliver a dose of poison. As loved ones watched in
distress, the inmate visibly winced in pain.

Ultimately, the needle found its mark, a stream of lethal chemicals
flowed, and Williams - convicted of murdering 4 people with a shotgun in
1979 - drew his final breath.

Surprising many, he did not leave behind a statement for the warden to
read. But his closest supporters made sure his departure from the world
was not a quiet one. Filing out after witnessing the execution, they
yelled a message in unison:

"The state of California just killed an innocent man!"

The startling cry pierced the silence that had cloaked the small room, and
relatives of Williams' victims appeared shaken. Lora Owens, whose stepson,
Albert, was gunned down at a Pico Rivera convenience store, hunched
forward in her brown metal chair. Another woman offered a comforting
embrace.

Owens left the prison without talking to reporters. But earlier, the
red-haired grandmother said she had hoped that watching Williams die would
soften the pain of her loss by allowing her to "let it go" a bit.

No family members of Williams' other victims were present.

Williams, 51, became the 12th man executed by the State of California
since voters reinstated the death penalty more than a quarter century ago.
While capital punishment inevitably stirs a wrenching debate, this case
prompted an extraordinary outpouring from celebrities, clergy and others
who urged that his life be spared.

On Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to step in, and the courts
said no to the convict's final appeals.

That meant a lethal injection for Inmate C29300. California's death row
population was about to drop by one.

The drama at San Quentin began just shy of midnight Monday, inside the
archaic chamber where condemned men used to be killed with poisonous gas.

As some 2000 people protested the execution just outside prison gates, 39
witnesses were ushered into a viewing area surrounding the windowed death
chamber, some on risers, others seated behind a white railing that left
them separated by only a few feet - and thick glass - from the procedure
about to unfold inside.

Along with the victims and Williams' friends and lawyers, there were 17
reporters and a handful of unidentified observers invited by the state.

The crowded room seemed airless, and not a word was uttered. Earlier, all
had been admonished not to talk, move or "sob too loudly." Violation of
those rules, an officer said, meant immediate eviction "with no
discussion."

As prison officials prepared for his execution, Williams lay still,
dressed in white socks and prison blues. He wore a solemn expression and
rimless spectacles on his face. His hair and graying beard were neatly
clipped.

He tilted his head to the left, making eye contact in turn with his close
friend Barbara Becnel, and two other friends, who responded by pumping
their fists in the air. Out of his line of sight sat John Monaghan, the
deputy district attorney from Los Angeles who led the fight against his
mercy plea.

As the prison technician searched for a vein, Williams swiveled his head
from side to side - mouthing words of support to friends. In return,
Becnel and the others blew him kisses and mouthed messages back - "God
bless you" and "I love you" among them.

As the minutes crawled by, Williams grew clearly frustrated by the
continued prodding. At 12:12 a.m., he raised his head and spoke to an
officer at his right shoulder, who swallowed but said nothing. Two minutes
later, he raised his head, looked at the technician and appeared to say,
"Still can't find it?"

Finally, the catheter was inserted and two officers began securing
Williams' hands to the gurney with loop after loop of white adhesive tape.
The officers then swiveled the padded table 90 degrees to the right - so
that he faced his loved ones - and left the room.

At 12:21 a.m., the death warrant was read, broadcast so loudly it caused a
few witnesses to jump. Williams moved his feet and seemed to writhe.

Then, an unseen hand behind the chamber's walls, began to pump 3 chemicals
into Williams. First, came sodium pentothal to put him to sleep, followed
by pancuronium bromide to stop his breathing, and finally potassium
chloride to stop his heart.

It was impossible to know exactly when the poisons began to flow, but
their effect was visible in Williams' body. His head - held up throughout
much of the preparation period - fell back at 12:23 a.m. and did not lift
again. His chest, not the 52 inches it was 30 years ago but still massive,
stopped rising less than a minute after that.

Still, no one budged, until a porthole in a steel door slipped open, and a
white paper appeared. Quoting Warden Steven Ornoski, an officer pronounced
Williams dead. Soon after, the chamber's curtains were pulled closed.

As witnesses departed, some thought back to words they had heard hours
earlier, from a prison psychologist charged with preparing everyone for
the evening ahead.

Don't be surprised, warned Gregory Goldstein, if you feel panic, anxiety
or other emotions similar to those one might experience while "stuck in a
natural disaster." An execution, he added, is a "highly unusual event."

For the families of victims, it is also the official final punctuation on
a traumatic event.

(source: Los Angeles Times)

*****************

Report from San Quentin----California Murders Tookie Williams


The scene outside San Quentin last night was amazing. People had started
arriving at the prison gates in the early afternoon, soon after Governor
Schwarzenegger announced that he was denying clemency for Stan Tookie
Williams. By the time I arrived, shortly after 8:00 pm, the crowd had
swelled to 1500, and for the next 4 hours, people kept coming. 2000, 3000
- after that it was impossible to keep count.

Young and old, blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians, Christians, Buddhists,
Muslims, socialists, and just plain outraged, all made the long trek to
protest the legal lynching of an African American man who had atoned for
the crimes that he did commit and who was being killed for those that he
did not. A handful of right-wing provocateurs, hoping to provoke a clash
with their message of racism and hate, were surrounded and quickly pushed
to the margins, where they could not disrupt the rally.

There was great sadness that the fight to save Stan's life and prevent
another senseless death had been lost. But unlike most other executions
I've protested outside San Quentin, the mood was not somber but angry and
defiant. One electric speaker after another addressed the crowd. Joan Baez
sang and declared, "Tonight is a planned, efficient, calculated,
antiseptic, cold-blooded murder." Angela Davis praised Stan and Mumia Abu
Jamal as the most eloquent voices against the death penalty and placed
them in the context of black radical struggles. Exonerated California
death-row inmate, and former Black Panther, Shujaa Graham drew the
parallels between his life and Tookie's, and explained how he had escaped
execution in spite of the system, not because of it.

Derrel Meyers, whose own son was murdered on the streets of San Francisco,
spoke powerfully against the death penalty, placing the blame for violent
crime first and foremost on a system in which poverty and racism are
endemic. Oakland teacher Jessie Muldoon related how Stan's words and the
movie about his life, Redemption, connect with the inner-city kids in her
classes. Several young people told the same story from their own
first-hand perspective, talking about the impact of Stan's message on
their lives and reading from his books.

Every execution, whether of the guilty or the innocent, creates new
victims, but none more so than this one, in which the voice of a man who
has spent the last 12 years speaking out against gang violence,
successfully persuading thousands of kids to leave or stay out of gangs,
was silenced.

The tortured logic of Schwarzenegger's "Statement of Decision" attempts to
deny this. According to the Governor, "the continued pervasiveness of gang
violence leads one to question the efficacy of Williams' message"-which is
like denying the efficacy of aspirin because people still get headaches.
Predictably, he ignored the thousands of messages from parents, teachers,
teens and younger children, testifying to the positive impact of Stan's
writings and their life changing influence.

The rest of Schwarzenegger's statement is even worse. It claims that there
are no "significant doubts" about Stan's guilt because his case has been
fully reviewed by the courts. But a recent examination of the evidence by
the San Francisco Chronicle showed that significant doubts are certainly
possible.

The prosecution's case was based on circumstantial evidence and the
testimony of witnesses "whose credibility was highly suspect," U.S.
District Judge Stephen Wilson wrote in 1998. He noted that there were no
eyewitnesses to the shotgun murders of three people at a Los Angeles motel
and that the only testifying eyewitness to the killing of a convenience
store clerk was "an accomplice who had a strong motive to lie."

Four years later, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voiced similar
qualms, saying the prosecution had relied on witnesses with
"less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie" to win lenient
treatment for their own crimes.

In the days leading up to the execution, new evidence that Stan was framed
emerged and was simply ignored. Having dismissed questions about the
conviction, the Governor then concludes that since Stan will not apologize
for crimes he has always denied committing, "there can be no redemption."

Even more outrageous, however, is the following passage:

The dedication of Williams' book "Life in Prison" casts significant doubt
on his personal redemption. This book was published in 1998, several years
after Williams' claimed redemptive experience. Specifically, the book is
dedicated to "Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur,
Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier,
Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countless
other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of
living behind bars." The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most
have violent pasts and some have been convicted of committing heinous
murders, including the killing of law enforcement.

But the inclusion of George Jackson on this list defies reason and is a
significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees
violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal
problems.

Of those convicted of "committing heinous murders" on this list, two
(Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt and Dhoruba Al-Mujahid) were later found to have
been wrongfully convicted after serving a combined forty-six years behind
bars, and four (Assata Shakur, John Africa, Leonard Peltier and Mumia
Abu-Jamal) have always proclaimed their innocence and are widely believed
to have been framed. George Jackson, who Schwarzenegger apparently regards
as the epitome of "violence and lawlessness" was convicted of stealing $71
in 1960 at the age of 18, sentenced to an indeterminate sentence of 1 year
to life, became a Black Panther and political leader in prison (which
Schwarzenegger equates with forming a gang), charged but never convicted
of killing a prison guard, and assassinated by guards in 1971.

It seems that Stanley Williams' real mistake was choosing to honor the
wrong people. The system loves those who advocate peace and nothing more,
but not those who believe that genuine peace is ineradicably tied to
justice. Since Stan, by the company he placed himself in, was implicitly
challenging the status quo, his claims to be a peacemaker and to have
undergone redemption could be rejected out of hand. Thus in a very real
sense, his fate was decided, at least in part, by his politics.

It was also decided by the Governor's cynical calculation that denying
clemency was the best way to shore up his political fortunes, and in
particular to mend bridges with the far right of the California Republican
Party. In the days leading up to the execution, the media was full of
sensational reports predicting riots if clemency was not granted. But as
one Los Angeles activist responded, "Everyone is so worried that Black and
brown people are going to riot if Williams is executed. I'm not. I'm more
worried that white people are going to start a riot when he's given
clemency." That was the sentiment to which Schwarzenegger was responding.

None of this was lost on those protesting outside San Quentin on Monday
night and into the early hours of Tuesday. There was mourning (and fury)
at the announcement of Stan's death. But there was also hope that out of
the failed struggle to save his life a new movement to oppose the racist
death penalty in California was being born. That is something that Stan
would have been proud to know.

(source: CounterPunch - Phil Gasper is Professor of Philosophy at Notre
Dame de Namur University in California and a member of the Campaign to End
the Death Penalty. He nominated Stanley Williams for the Nobel Peace Prize
5 times)

*******************

Emotions run high outside San Quentin's gates


As the crowd outside San Quentin State Prison was told after midnight this
morning that Tookie Williams was dead, a lone voice cried out, "Shame."
Then the throng took up the chant, "Tookie, Tookie, Tookie, Tookie."

"Despite what happened tonight, people do not feel defeated, as you can
hear," said Jeff Boyette of San Francisco, a Williams supporter in his
20s.

"I think people see tonight just how unjust the system is," added Sarah
Poole, another young death penalty opponent from San Francisco.

Moments earlier, as the execution time neared, there were tears as people
sang "We Shall Overcome."

With California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear standing by, the
crowd of well over a thousand dispersed peacefully.

It brought to an end one of the most celebrated death penalty cases in
memory.

All night, the scene outside San Quentin's East Gate had been a crush of
Tookie Williams supporters, capital punishment opponents, journalists and
a few demonstrators in favor of Williams' execution.

As midnight drew closer, people poured into little San Quentin Village,
swelling the crowd and jamming the narrow street leading into the prison.

The CHP was very much in evidence throughout the night, tightening
security on roads around San Quentin and circling overhead in a
helicopter.

The large turnout was not entirely unexpected, even though people had to
park far away and hike in. The Williams case, with its condemnation of
gang violence and themes of peace and redemption, had become a cause
celebre in California.

"Tookie Williams has a new celebrity based on his transformation," the
Rev. Jesse Jackson said as he waited, comparing the founder of the Crips
street gang to Malcolm X. "He likes that."

Jackson was among a contingent of Williams' supporters who walked to the
prison from San Francisco, carrying signs calling for an end to
"state-sponsored murder."

Standing on a makeshift stage under glaring lights before the execution,
he told the crowd that he had visited Williams twice that day.

"I said, 'We'll see you in the morning,' and we laughed and embraced," he
said. "Tookie's last words to me were, 'Those who care about my legacy,
avoid violence.'"

Actor Mike Farrell, a longtime death penalty opponent, condemned Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger for denying Williams' clemency, and taking so long
to announce his decision.

"He didn't respond for 97 hours," he said. "He tortured him (Williams) for
97 hours."

Folksinger and peace activist Joan Baez took the stage, quoted Gandhi,
saying, "An eye for an eye until the whole world is blind," then added,
"We have to be blind in this country to do what we do."

After branding the execution "cold-blooded murder," she sang an a cappella
rendition of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and said she would "spend the
night silently in prayer."

Angela Davis appeared, and Marin actor Sean Penn was on hand, but did not
speak.

Marin author Anne Lamott was among those in the noisy, jostling crowd.

"I'm just bearing witness," she said. "As Woody Allen once said, '90 % of
life is showing up.'"

For Lamott, bearing witness at the prison gate has been a lifelong ritual.
She said she used to come to San Quentin in the 1950s with her father, who
taught English to prisoners.

"We came when they were going to gas someone and stood vigil," she said.
"It's so horrible to me."

While the crowd was generally peaceful, there were some minor scuffles and
conflicts.

A "shock jock" from a Los Angeles radio station had his microphone broken
when he harassed Jesse Jackson, demanding that Jackson recite the names of
Williams' victims. He was later surrounded by Williams' supporters,
chanting "racist go home."

A capital punishment advocate with a bullhorn was surrounded and drowned
out by a circle of drummers. And a man's crudely-lettered cardboard sign,
which read: "Cook Kookie" was quickly obscured by death penalty opponents
holding signs with slogans such as: "The California Department of
Corrections is a serial killer. Stop it before it murders again."

Marin peace activists Alan and Ruth Barnett of Mill Valley came to the
prison after Schwarzenegger surprised them by failing to grant clemency in
the politically-charged case.

"One feels so helpless," he said. "These are cathartic experiences for
people."

(source: Marin Independent Journal)

***************

Reporter's Notebook: Inside the Execution Chamber


FOX News correspondent Adam Housley was 1 of 39 people who witnessed the
Tuesday morning execution of Stanley Tookie Williams.

Williams was convicted in 1981 for gunning down convenience store clerk
Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven in Whittier, Calif., and killing Yen-I
Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, as well as the couple's daughter
Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at the Los Angeles motel they owned. Williams
claimed he was innocent, but witnesses at the trial said he boasted about
the killings, saying, "You should have heard the way he sounded when I
shot him."

This is Housley's report of Tookie Williams' last minutes:

I have seen death before, but never actually witnessed a last breath.
Tonight that changed.

Tonight I saw the deep breaths of nervousness, the breaths of annoyance
when an IV couldn't be inserted easily ... and the last quick breaths of
air as a man's chest went still. This man wasn't a friend, a member of my
family, or even an acquaintance. This man was convicted of brutally
murdering 4 innocent people and later bragging about how he watched their
last breaths. Tonight I saw his.

The timeline is actually long and detailed. I have shortened it, without
detracting from the important facts or feelings. The most captivating: the
moment when 39 men and women walk into a light tan room and gaze through
protected glass as this convicted killer, Stanley Tookie Williams, is
brought in, strapped down and put to death.

The timeline goes like this, from 12:29 p.m. Monday in California until
2:57 a.m. Tuesday.

Monday, Dec. 12: Preparing to Witness Death

12:29 p.m. I have been picked as a witness to the Williams execution. We
all await the governor's decision. Clemency from Arnold Schwarzenegger is
really the last hope for Williams and those who say he should live. It is
at this time that I get the tip - clemency is denied, and I call the word
in to our crews.

12:31 p.m. The drive to San Quentin Prison begins. I arrive at the
location outside the prison's east gate a short time later. News crews
line the road, and some protesters have arrived. In the background, I see
San Pablo Bay and the Richmond San Rafael Bridge. This location is
beautiful; the men who are housed here are not.

6:30 p.m. At this point, we leave for the west gate of San Quentin. It is
here the witnesses and media crews will gather. Satellite trucks are lined
up; I am sitting in ours waiting for the officers to wave us into the
outer range of the prison.

7:04 p.m. We get clearance and we drive through the first gate of San
Quentin. Our truck is searched; we are patted down and then issued a pass
depending on our clearance. Our satellite truck operators get blue media
passes and I receive a gold badge, which signifies a witness to the
execution. We then are escorted on a short drive to a location outside the
San Quentin Prison main wall, but just in front of the main building.

9 p.m. Our first briefing inside the prison. We're told that Williams has
refused most of his rights. He requested no last meal, is watching little
television and spends most of his time on the phone. He had six visitors,
he spoke with each individually and then all of them together at the end
of his meetings. The convicted killer also received a bundle of 50
letters, all spiritual in nature.

9:14 p.m. The 17 media witnesses are separated from the rest of the media
mass. We are escorted into a small room, then out a side door into a
shuttle. Our trip is very short, maybe 100 yards or so. We go through yet
another gate, this time we stop at the historical main building. Here we
receive a quick briefing about grief or psychological effects we might
feel after watching an execution. The talk is short, to the point and
understood. We then return, via shuttle, back through the gate and join
the rest of the media.

11 p.m. I am now removing all my personal effects. Inside the viewing room
I will be allowed only the clothes I am wearing and a watch. Off comes all
jewelry; no money, no wallet, not even a receipt in my pocket is allowed.
A pencil and sheets of paper will be provided once we get inside the main
prison fence line. I give my outer coat and effects to my producer and
prepare to load into the shuttle.

11:14 p.m. I am escorted onto the shuttle along with 16 other media
witnesses.

We are taken to the employee lounge, which is inside the main gate of San
Quentin, but just outside of the east block, which is death row. Here we
are patted down and each witness is assigned a prison guard escort.

11:52 p.m. 10 prison officers form a makeshift wall that lines our path
from the lounge area, perpendicular across a small road and into the death
chamber viewing area.

11:53 p.m. I watch as the other witnesses enter the death chamber viewing
area; we are guided into the room right behind them.

11:54 p.m. We enter the death chamber witness room, which I am told is
called the execution chamber witness gallery. The exterior door is similar
to what you see on a warship, or some cruise liners. It is heavy, metal,
and large rivets are visible. There is also a cell door that has been
opened. The room itself is small, tan and has 20-foot ceilings. We are
escorted to the east wall and are asked to stand on 2 risers, similar to
ones used by church choirs. Everything is tan, except the chamber. It
protrudes like half of a giant octagon into our narrow rectangular room.
The execution chamber is all green. On the outside, on the inside and even
the table and its pads -- all green. There is a tan railing about a foot
from the thick glass; it curves around the chamber. The setup reminds me
of being at an aquarium. The execution chamber looks like a tank and is
obviously airtight. The room is dim and there are about 12 people sitting
in folding chairs that line the railing. The media is on risers on the
east wall, official witnesses on risers on the south wall and Tookie
Williams' chosen witnesses (he is allowed 5) are on risers on the west
wall.

11:58 p.m. 5 prison officers escort the prisoner into the room. Williams
appears older than the pictures, his hair is speckled gray and cut short.
He wears wire-rimmed glasses and a light blue short-sleeve shirt. His
pants are dark blue and he wears white socks. He is chained around his
waist, and that chain is attached to handcuffs. He shows no fight as
officers lay him down on the green padded doctor's table. He is strapped
across the ankles with large black straps. His chest is large and expands
and contracts deeply and rapidly; it appears he is nervous. Outside I can
hear helicopters faintly; they have circled San Quentin for several hours,
providing security.

Tuesday, Dec. 13: Execution Day

12:01a.m. Williams has a short gray speckled beard. He raises his head a
bit as prison officers fix more large black straps across his knees. His
arms are secured next and he turns his head to the left. From that vantage
he can see his five allowed witnesses - 2 lawyers, three friends. They
exchange glances and nods and he mouths words to them that we cannot see.
At this point, the convict is strapped at the waist and a shoulder harness
is attached. Cables from the heart monitor can be seen running from under
his shirt into the chamber's back area and into a heart monitor machine.

12:03 a.m. The officers finish the securing of Williams, the handcuffs and
chains are removed in favor of the straps. All prison personnel inside the
chamber now wear surgical gloves. Up until now, we have seen only men in
the room with Williams, but the officer who enters with the medical
supplies is a woman. She quickly inserts an IV into the convict's right
arm.

I still hear helicopters outside and the room is eerily quiet. We were
warned that no talking, loud sobbing, or outbursts would be allowed. The
only sound besides the distant helicopters comes from pencils writing
feverishly onto lined paper, reporters making every effort to get every
detail as the execution process and protocol continues just 8 feet or so
from where I am standing.

In the room, all witnesses are fixated on the process behind the glass.
The metal strips that separate the panes still remind me of being at an
aquarium, or inside a submarine. As Williams continues to mouth words to
his witnesses, his attorney begins to sway nervously. He looks down at the
ground; he and Williams will eventually make eye contact and nod at each
other.

12:08 a.m. There seems to be some problem finding a good vein and
attaching the second IV to Williams' left arm. As the prison officers
struggle with the IV, Williams raises his head fully for the first time.
He is strapped down tightly. He appears to look over his body and assess
his predicament. He sighs and puts his head back down.

12:10 a.m. After surveying the room with the head movement he is allowed,
Williams turns his head to his right. He stares at the media. It is a long
look and one that attempts to pierce our being in the room. There is no
mistaking, even as this man awaits death, he is attempting to be in
control, he wants to intimidate. He stops after about 10 seconds or so.
His breathing is still deep and nervously quick. His massive chest
continues to fluctuate distinctly.

12:14 a.m. As the work continues to find a vein in Williams' left arm (the
process took about 12 minutes), he sighs and then leans his head up and
says disgustingly, "still can't find it." The female officer rises up, she
is sweating, and with the back of her wrist she wipes her brow. You can
tell the stress is building and it is beginning to penetrate the glass and
envelop many in the room.

12:17 a.m. The IV process is finally finished. The room is now getting
heavy, the air thick and warming. Two officers now take rolls of adhesive
tape and tape the convict's wrists, hands and fingers. Williams now looks
like he has two casts on his hands, it is obvious we will see no movement
when he is put to death. Williams continues to look left and continues to
mouth words to his supporters.

12:19 a.m. Now that the body has been prepared, the table is unhooked and
swung around. No longer are we looking at Williams' right side, we now see
the top of his head. There is no sweat and he continues to breathe deeply.
Williams once again looks over his predicament, he now has to strain to
see his supporters. His attorney smiles and nods his head. Williams
wiggles his toes inside his white socks.

12:21 a.m. A small metal round hole opens in the vault-like door that
separates the execution chamber from the viewing room. A paper is handed
through that is read by an officer inside our viewing room. Her words echo
through the chamber. The announcement ends with, "Stanley Williams has
been found guilty of first degree murder and special circumstances - the
execution shall now proceed."

12:22 a.m. Williams looks around one last time and nods his head toward
his five witnesses/supporters. One woman covers her face.

12:24 a.m. The 1st drug is administered into the IV, followed by two more.
Williams gulps several times. He appears to pass out as his deep quick
breaths become shorter. They become quicker and shorter by the second. His
large chest begins to move slower and his toes no longer move, his head no
longer strains or moves.

12:25 a.m. The room is still silent. Pencils work furiously. People strain
to see any movement by Williams. Witnesses shift nervously and his lawyer
looks away. The convict is still.

12:34 a.m. The witness room seems to be getting smaller. People shift from
one leg to another. We still hear the helicopters and the pencils and we
also hear talking inside the airtight execution chamber. We cannot discern
what is being said, we believe it is the attending doctor confirming the
inmate has now been put to death.

12:36 a.m. The small hole in the door is opened again and another note is
passed through to a guard. Her words once again echo through this stale
environment. She says in part, "May I have your attention please, Warden
Steve Ornoski declares inmate Stanley Williams dead." Pronounced dead at
12:35 a.m. by the attending physician. The room is now still. The pencils
have stopped, the helicopters cannot be heard, and a few of the victim's
family members have begun to quietly cry.

12:37 a.m. The lifeless body strapped is still strapped to the table.
There are no officers in the room, he is alone and the subject of stares.
Two officers now undo two sets of curtains that are pale tan and similar
to shower curtains. They slide them around the semicircle rods and
separate the dead inmate from our room. The first to be led out are the
Williams supporters. His two legal counsels leave without incident or
comment. The same cannot be said for the three others. 2 women and 1 man
in chorus yell, "The State of California has murdered an innocent man."
Their words catch the room by surprise and a family member of one of the
victims is consoled. She is Laura Owens, the stepmother of Albert Owens,
who was shot twice in the back by Williams. Owens' last breath was touted
by the killer to his friends. Now Williams' last breath has been witnessed
by 39 people who will tell of this experience to the world.

12:38 a.m. We file out of the room, meet again with our assigned guards
and are escorted back onto the shuttle. We then are taken back to the
media staging area inside the outer prison wall. There we give a press
conference and recount our thoughts and experiences.

My closing thoughts are simple: I was nervous at first, unsure what to
expect. I now understand this process is choreographed down to the number
of surgical gloves in the execution chamber. The lethal injection
execution is clinical, it is sterile and in the minds of a great majority
of California voters, it is a just process. I leave with an understanding
and with an experience I will never forget. My thoughts as I sit here
outside the damp cold gates of San Quentin are with the victims and the
incredible hurt their families have endured and will endure throughout
their lifetimes. Stanley Tookie Williams has paid the ultimate price. And
as the governor stated, he never seemed to show any remorse.

(source: Fox News)

************

Essay about Execution Day -- by San Quentin Death Row writer.


Execution Day (San Quentin State Prison)

by Steve Allen Champion, a.k.a. Adisa Akanni Kamara


It doesn't matter if on the day of an execution, the morning forecast is
sunny and warm. A turbulent storm is brewing on the inside, and humidity
on death row is always high. The feeling is both eerie and sickening, as
if some mysterious, awful sore is about to discharge itself.

Execution day is the quietest day on death row. The usual early morning
banter, pots and pans being hustled about by guards preparing to serve
breakfast, the morning ritual of "roll call" as someone shouts good
morning to friends, sounds of TVs and radios being switched on - all are
stilled: the impending doom sucks sound right from the air.

The silence on death row can be deafening. And on any other day, silence
is a welcome break from the monotony of the screeching noise. One would
assume the silence is a result of people becoming more introspective, more
contemplative about the reality of their situation. In some cases this is
true, but the opposite is more likely. Most people are in bed asleep
trying to escape. Anytime there is a scheduled execution the entire
prison, including all programming, comes to a complete halt. Everything
ceases while San Quentin moves into high security, standing patient and
poised to snuff out another life. Prison officials stroll the tiers,
peering into the cells at us, as if they're seeing some rare and
disgusting animals on the verge of extinction. Many of them support the
death penalty and gleefully rejoice when we are pronounced dead. Nothing
is exchanged during these observations but hostile glances.

Most people on death row will be glued to their TVs or radios listening
intensely as news reporters interrupt daily programming to give updates on
the pending execution. The gathering of anti- and pro-death penalty groups
will assemble in front of the prison gate with picket signs and a
conviction that their cause will prevail. A phalanx of prison guards
standing in full combat gear will be stationed in front of the prison gate
forming a prophylactic shield, like serfs protecting the fortress of their
feudal lord from invasion.

The attorneys for the condemned man will be scurrying around throughout
the day, both in front of cameras and behind the scenes, making last ditch
efforts to save the life of their client. They'll work overtime trying to
convince us that there is always hope, that we should not give up. But we
who have been on death row know this to be a lie, because a last minute
appeal to an apathetic court or a politically driven Governor (who rode in
office as a pro-death penalty candidate) is like asking a hungry, angry
bear not to bite you.

Death penalty opponents will give fiery and spirited speeches throughout
the night, trying to create a hopeful and optimistic atmosphere in the
face of something diabolical. The tug-of-war between the death penalty
supporters and opponents will rage on, but in the end no one wins. A
reporter will announce the menu of the condemned man's last meal, and the
small separate gatherings of true believers and preachers of hate will
stand juxtaposed. The silent prayers and candles of the night vigil are as
loud as thunder and as bright as lightening.

Death row prisoners are attuned to everything going on. We understand that
whatever the outcome, our situation is amplified. None of us are exempt
from the execution, none of us walks away unaffected, and many of us stay
up to the last minute, hoping the attorney unearths some new evidence that
will alter the court's ruling, or in a temporary fit of idealism, hoping a
judge who acted too hastily in an earlier decision will change his ruling.
We are always disappointed. But hope, as fleeting or false as it is, is
all we have at this level. And when that is gone . . . .

Men who normally don't pray will find themselves asking God to exert his
powers and intervene to save a life. We usually get our answer just after
12:01 a.m., when the person has been pronounced dead, we're let off
lockdown, and the prison program returns to "business as usual."

(source: SF IndyBay.org)

***********

Prison can change a criminal, not a crime


When you read this, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 51, will have been granted
a reprieve or clemency as he sits on death row at San Quentin, or he will
be dead.

For the life of me, I can't get worked up about either scenario.

Williams, a co-founder of the Crips gang that began in Los Angeles and has
ravaged inner-city communities for decades, was convicted 24 years ago of
murdering four people in two criminal acts in 1979. His execution by
lethal injection was scheduled for early today -- shortly after midnight
in California -- barring the acceptance of a federal appeal or clemency
from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Williams says he's innocent and that he has spent much of the past dozen
years discovering the error of his ways. He has educated himself through
reading the Bible and other books, and he has written nine books for
children and teens critical of gang membership.

That's good.

He also has spoken by phone with civic groups, churches and the like about
the evil of gangs and was even credited with having some influence in the
recent truce between rival gangs, the Crips and the Bloods.

That's fine, too. I believe people can change.

That's why I am not a proponent of the death penalty. Not at all.

But if you kill folks in America while perpetrating another crime, you
might get the death penalty, especially back then in California. That was
the law.

So now, nearly a quarter of a century and several judicial appeals later,
I can't see how Williams' supporters can use the "he's a changed man"
argument to get him out of the consequences mandated by his conviction.

I hope he has changed. We all should change during the course of a couple
of decades. None of us would probably do now what we did then. Most of us
drop to our knees, thankful the stupidity of past actions didn't make us
pay with our lives.

Williams isn't as fortunate.

I'd love to see him spend the rest of his life behind bars, but only
because of my distaste for the death penalty. I don't want him to live,
though, simply because he has been redeemed.

In my late teens and early 20s, young people took drugs and then jumped
off buildings because the drugs made them think they could fly.

If they were alive today, I'm sure they wouldn't think of doing anything
so crazy.

If you smoke, you're likely to get lung cancer. If you have unprotected
sex with multiple partners, you might get HIV/AIDS.

And if you murder folks, you are liable to get executed. That wasn't a
secret back then. Williams knew it.

There are consequences for all of our actions.

The robber who hung next to Jesus on the cross was forgiven, but his life
was not spared.

I'd love to see Williams live in San Quentin for the rest of his life,
continuously telling young people how to avoid the future he made for
himself.

But if he has died, I hope he made peace with himself and with God, and
that his soul is at rest.

That's the best any of us can ask for.

(source: Merlene Davis, Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky)

*****************

A vigil of agony in California


This has been "the weekend of agony" in California. Some of it was for
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and some of it for the Hollywood friends of
Tookie Williams, who spent the weekend keeping a vigil at San Quentin.
Some of it, lest we forget, was for the friends and family of 4 murdered
innocents.

There was the most exquisite agony of all for Stanley "Tookie" Williams,
51, the founder of one of the most vicious gangs in America. He spent the
weekend pondering a final judgment waiting somewhere beyond California.

The day before Tookie was scheduled to die, at 12:01 this morning at the
tip of a hypodermic needle at San Quentin, was a day of feverish running
from court to court by his lawyers. First the California Supreme Court
declined to stay the hand of the executioner, saying that it found no
reason to upset the verdict of the court in Los Angeles that found him
guilty of first-degree murder in 1981. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals subsequently agreed, and toward the end of the day Gov.
Schwarzenegger said he would let the State of California proceed with one
final killing in the bloody saga of the man his gang called "Tookie."

"Stanley Williams insists he is innocent, and that he will not and should
not apologize or otherwise atone for the murders of the 4 victims in this
case," the governor wrote. "Without an apology and atonement for these
senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption."

The wistfully worded letter suggests that a confession, even one at the
execution gurney, might have made a difference. But read another way, the
letter suggests that the governor could have been grateful for Tookie's
stubborn insistence that, in the face of the overwhelmingly conclusive
evidence, he didn't do the deed.

It's a rare governor who can sign away a prisoner's life with the stroke
of his pen and not feel the stain of blood on his hands. I've known
several governors well, and all of them looked physically ill as execution
day approached. One famous Southern governor of my acquaintance, a man
with a (false) reputation for coldly calculated mischief, usually
disappeared for three or four days afterward. "I had to take to the woods
afterward," he once told me. "I had to be by myself, talking to God about
it. I never thought I had the moral right to undo the work of the state if
there was no compelling reason to undo it. But I didn't like doing what I
had to do."

But for the few who seem to take an almost carnal pleasure in
participating in the execution of another, even if vicariously, "capital
punishment" is a messy argument. Opponents never want to talk about the
crime. "We're told never to talk about the crime if we can avoid it," a
1-time advocate of the Legal Defense Fund once told me. "The man on death
row is invariably and typically a creep who poured lye down his
grandmother's throat or stomped his girlfriend to death. We make the
argument that capital punishment is not a deterrent to murder, the risk
that the innocent are sometimes convicted, and the moral argument that the
state should not descend to the level of murder."

Fans of the noose, the chair and the needle will sometimes argue, as
certain of my correspondents have, that killing the occasional innocent is
a small price to pay for keeping the mechanism of the ultimate punishment.

(I faithfully forward their names to their governors in the event innocent
volunteers are needed to validate their argument.)

Tookie Williams never killed his grandmother or his girlfriend, but he
took the lives of innocents - the 1st time after taking $120 from a clerk
at a 7-Eleven, and 2 weeks later he blew away an elderly Chinese couple
and their daughter, visiting from Taiwan, at a motel in south Los Angeles.

California, the most rootless of the states, no longer competes with the
likes of Texas and Virginia for dominance in the execution business.

Tookie Williams was scheduled to be only the 12th person to die since
capital punishment was resurrected a quarter of a century ago. Capital
punishment, though still favored by a majority of Americans, is falling
from favor once more, a relic to satisfy society's thirst for revenge.

(source: Jewish World Review - JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in
chief of The Washington Times)

************************

Public Executions: Live and in Color?


It is perhaps inevitable, following a high profile execution such as the
State of California carried out on Tookie Williams, that debate should be
re-opened on making executions public events. And while the death penalty
issue itself is usually reduced to moral arguments or its efficacy in a
modern industrialized society, the idea of allowing 300 million people to
become living witnesses to another human beings death causes even many
death penalty advocates to squirm uncomfortably in their seats, recoiling
at the prospect of watching life leave another person against his will.

Does this say something about our society's attitudes toward death, or
does it say something profound about our ambivalence toward the death
penalty? This is no small matter, for on the answer rests the fate of the
death penalty itself.

The last public execution in the United States was in 1936 in Owensboro,
Kentucky. But the fight to hide the execution of criminals from public
view actually extends back another several decades to the turn of the
century. The Progressive movement in the United States was all about
reform and most progressives believed it barbaric to have people witness
the death of a condemned criminal. It called to mind the worst excesses of
Rome and clashed with Victorian ideas of modesty surrounding death
rituals.

So beginning in 1890, states began enacting laws that placed the execution
of prisoners behind "enclosures" in order to "exclude public view."

For example, in 1919, the Missouri legislature adopted a statute which
required, "the sentence of death should be executed within the county
jail, if convenient, and otherwise within an enclosure near the jail." The
Missouri law permitted local officials to give out passes to anyone who
requested one in order to become a "witness" to these the executions but
this was honored mostly in the breach. In this respect, Missouris
executions were not "public" because the general populace was excluded by
law and the execution itself was carried out behind an enclosure.

Of course, there were still witnesses to executions, but these were
carefully chosen people whose numbers were kept extremely low. A big
reason for this was the manner of execution - electrocution.

There is perhaps no more gruesome way to die than being electrocuted to
death. It should go without saying that if an electrocution had ever been
televised, public opinion on the death penalty could very well have
flipped. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan gave this description of an
electrocution he witnessed: (WARNING: GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF DEATH
FOLLOWS)

...the prisoners eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on [his] cheeks. The
prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. The body
turns bright red as its temperature rises, and the prisoners flesh swells
and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. Sometimes the prisoner
catches fire." Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound like bacon
frying, and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeates the chamber.

Clearly, it was in the interests of supporters of the death penalty to
keep this grotesqueness from the general public.

Then in the 1980s there was a series of botched executions where horrible
suffering occurred when an electric chair malfunctioned. One such
execution in Georgia, of Otis Stephens, was particularly gruesome.

After the 1st jolt of electricity failed to kill him, Stephens struggled
for 8 minutes before a 2nd charge finished the job. The 1st jolt took 2
minutes, and there was a 6 minute pause so his body could cool before
physicians could examine him (and declare that another jolt was needed.)
During that 6-minute interval, Stephens took 23 breaths.

But as more and more journalists began to give graphic (and sensational)
descriptions of botched executions in the 1980s and 90s, anti-death
penalty sentiment began to grow. This led to the adoption of the current
method of execution by lethal injection. First proposed in Oklahoma in
1977, lethal injection seemed to fill the bill for death penalty advocates
in that it offered a more "humane" way to execute prisoners. The process
is simple; 3 drugs are administered by IV into an inmates veins. The 1st
drug is a strong sedative that induces unconsciousness. The other 2 drugs
stop the heart and respiration.

But even with death by lethal injection, there is suffering that would
make televising executions problematic. For example, Tookie Williams
execution was marred by a frantic search for a vein in which to place the
IVs. This is not uncommon in executions by lethal injection. Some inmates
have had to wait up to 40 minutes (WARNING: GRAPHIC COMMENTARY) strapped
to the chair as poorly-trained state employees try and hook up the IVs.
The fact that there are very few doctors and nurses who would break their
oaths not to cause a patient harm means that the state must often staff
the execution with lay prison workers.

But all of this skirts the real issue of whether or not executions should
be televised. Both advocates and opponents of the death penalty have
formed an unlikely alliance on the issue - for different reasons of
course. Opponents believe that if the American people saw what goes on in
the death chamber that their outrage would sweep the death penalty from
the books. Advocates are a little more prosaic in their support. They see
public executions as confirmation that the state-sponsored death of an
inmate is a judgment by society itself and that all should bear witness to
what we have wrought. There is also, proponents believe, a deterrence
factor inherent in televising executions.

It should be pointed out that there is not a shred of evidence that any
deterrent benefit will accrue to society if we make executions public. It
is also true that there is no evidence that what would surely be the
biggest TV audience in history would be swayed one way or another about
capital punishment by witnessing an execution live and in color. What
should be the criteria then for deciding whether or not public executions
should be allowed?

In many ways, the mannier in which a person dies is the most personal and
private moment in an entire life. Watching as life leaves the body has
been described as a mystical experience - one moment the person is "there"
the next he is "gone." For this reason, courts have continuously held that
prisoners have a right not to be forced into public executions. And of
course, it should go without saying that the effect on innocent family
members of the condemned who would be watching (or knowing that everyone
else is watching) their loved ones death would be horrible indeed.

But when is the personal outweighed by the political? Does society's
interest in bearing witness to an execution outweigh the hardship that
would fall on innocent family members?

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh did not formally request that his
execution be televised. But he did question the number of witnesses that
were allowed to watch him die.

Given the crime for which McVeigh was convicted, it seems logical to
assume that his motives in wishing to have his execution televised were
simply to undermine the legitimacy of the federal government by
broadcasting a horrific act that the government sanctions.

However, if the government sanctions such an act, then by definition (at
least in this country), the people sanction it. Clearly, if the public
wishes to continue to sanction executions, it is going to have to come to
grips with the nature of the procedure. It is gruesome. Executions behind
closed doors serve one legitimate purpose; protecting the privacy and the
dignity of the condemned individual. For that reason, courts have rightly
held that prisoners cannot be forced into public executions.

But is "the privacy and dignity" of the condemned reason enough to prevent
the people's need to see what the government is doing in their name? Is it
our right to know what it's like to be executed?

These were questions taken up the the North Carolina Courts in Lawson v.
Dixon in which a condemned inmate wished to have his execution filmed and
broadcast on the Phil Donahue Show. Their arguments settled on Mr. Lawsons
14th amendment equal protection claims and Mr. Donahues First Amendment
right to use "the tool of his trade" - a TV camera - to cover the
execution. The 3 arguments put forth by the warden of the prison (Dixon)
were:

1) the ban on cameras in the witness room protected the identity of prison
employees involved in the execution from angry inmates and an angry
public;

2) broadcasting an execution would incite violence in the prison, thereby
threatening prison employees; and

3) video cameras could be used to break the heavy glass surrounding the
gas chamber thereby threatening the lives of those individuals in the
witness room.

The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in favor of Dixon, finding that the
warden had compelling reasons to exclude video cameras. They also
dismissed the claims of Lawson based on the 1st and 14th Amendments.
However, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, while not required to address
the merits of Lawsons claim, called into question the validity of the
North Carolina Supreme Courts determination that Lawson did not have any
constitutional guarantee to either 1) select those persons whom he wished
to witness his execution, or 2) to require that his execution be filmed.

What this means is that its possible that public executions in America may
become a reality. With the explosion of cable outlets, all it would take
would be one tabloid TV show with enough money (and moxie) to convince an
inmate to fight for the right to have his execution plastered all over TV.
The inmates family could be in for a huge payday. This scenario was
actually the subject of a 1994 TV movie entitled Witness to the Execution.
And while the story centered on the inmates 2nd thoughts of having his
execution broadcast on a Pay-Per-View basis and the slimy journalist who
coaxed him not to back out, it is not beyond the realm of the possible
that such a situation could arise.

Wouldn't it be better to craft laws that guarantee access to the media in
the form of pool coverage? And the biggest question of all; could we
actually trust the media not to turn the execution into a 3 ring circus?

As for the 1st question, while it may be better to regulate coverage of an
execution rather than have it turn into a competitive bidding process, the
technical aspects of coverage would be a huge challenge to legislate.
However, it has been done before. The law opening up the House and Senate
to TV coverage stipulated camera angles and other technical requirements
so as not to show lawmakers asleep at their desks or the fact that most
speeches are given to a completely empty chamber. Clearly, where theres a
will, there would be a way.

But is the desire really there to televise executions? There is no public
clamor at the moment, but that may change if an inmate were ever to win a
case that would force prisons to open the death chamber to cameras. And
that begs the question; how would TV networks handle an execution?

My guess is that it would unintentionally become the biggest extravaganza
in TV history. The worldwide audience would be staggering. And no amount
of respectful commentary or phony piety on the part of the talking heads
would be able to obscure the fact that a human being - cowardly, brutal,
and thuggish as he may be - would die right in front of our eyes. "As men,
we are all equal in the presence of death" said Publilius Syrus. This is a
truth that many Americans may find unpalatable. Would we as a society be
able to deal with public executions or would we find the entire exercise
so distasteful that the political rationale for capital punishment would
evaporate?

We may find out sooner than we are prepared to admit.

(source: The American Thinker)

******************

Ending the Death Penalty, with Tookie in the Lead Never Again


Stan Tookie Williams is dead. Long live Stan Tookie Williams.

It is a common saying on the Left that, after a devastating defeat like
the one we suffered in the wee hours of this morning, we should organize,
not mourn.

I never had the honor of meeting Tookie Williams. As I fought to save his
live over the past several weeks, as I watched the movement swell and
finally culminate in a rally at San Quentin of thousands of people ? there
not only to bear witness to his assassination, but also to express outrage
at it ? I knew I was seeing something special. So many people over the
past few months come together to save this man ? from every race and
religion, every political perspective and every age ? and we came closer
to succeeding than we would have thought possible six months ago. We also,
I believe, witnessed the beginning of a new Civil Rights movement in the
United States.

Yet still we mourn.

The grief and anger that we feel at the passing of our friend, our
comrade, our brother is tempered with a strength that he gave us to say,
"Never again." We stand unbowed before Schwarzenegger and the entire
machinery of death and vow that not one more of our brothers or sisters
will we let you take from us, not one more death will we mourn, not one
more innocent person shall be sacrificed to the twin demons of racism and
poverty.

There are moments in history that, looking back, are pregnant with the
possibility of moving mountains. They galvanize movements, laying bear
awful truths previously hidden and endowing people with the confidence
that life can be different and that they are the key to making it so. We
may look back at the day Tookie was so cruelly taken from us as just such
a moment.

No matter what we do, Tookie will live on. He is a movement unto himself,
helping thousands of young people steer clear of his mistakes and giving
hope and self-respect to a generation of young black men. Our job is not
to keep Tookie's memory alive, for who could forget him, but to build on
his work, to march forward, with Tookie at the lead, to tackle the deep
injustice and racism of this society and construct something worthy of his
legacy.

It is up to us to follow Tookie's example and marshal our passion and
intellect, our conviction and dedication, to move that mountain.

Some of us have been in this movement for years, some of us have come more
recently, and still others have been pushed by Stan's work into activism
for the first time. Whatever our history in this movement, it is plain to
see that our future is stronger than our past, and that the years of work
put in by those who are the backbone of the movement, before Tookie
Williams was a national story, has enabled us to be where we are today.

We have put Schwarzenegger on notice ? that we will exact a pound of
political flesh for his cowardice and cold-bloodedness. If he, along with
Attorney General Bill Lockyer, Senator Dianne Feinstein (silent till the
end on Tookie's case), and the rest of California's execution squad want
to continue to kill the innocent, the reformed, people of color and the
poor, then we must respond by making them pay for their bloodlust - both
on the streets and at the ballot box.

Our next step in this effort is a moratorium on executions. 2 more men are
scheduled to die in California in the next two months: Clarence Ray Allen
on January 17th and Michael Morales in February. There is also moratorium
legislation being introduced in the California legislature in early
January. That legislation came too late for Tookie, and our efforts to
save him did not succeed. Can we move from this terrible defeat to victory
in one short month? Can we build on the momentum of the largest anti-death
penalty campaign in decades? It is incumbent on us to try.

It is in times like these, when the hour seems most desperate and our
grief threatens to swallow us whole, that we must turn to our forebears
for inspiration. Stan is the latest link in a chain of martyrs that goes
back millennia, of those who died at the hands of power for the
fundamental challenge they posed, for the alternative they illuminated.

The last few decades in America have seen that chain forged in blood and
sorrow, most harshly for black America, who have lost Martin and Malcolm,
Fred Hampton and George Jackson.

And now Tookie.

Going back further in our history may provide some solace going forward,
as we are reminded that those who fell before us live on as we carry their
flag into the battle for a better world. As August Spies, one of the
Haymarket Martyrs hanged in 1886, proclaimed to those who sought to
silence him:

If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement, then
hang us. Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there, and behind
you, and in front of you, and everywhere, the flames will blaze up. It is
a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground is on fire upon
which you stand.

Stan Tookie Williams is dead. Long live Stan Tookie Williams.

(source: CounterPunch - Michael George Smith is a student at the
University of California, Berkeley)

******************

Tookie Williams supporters vow to clear his name


Friends and supporters of ex-Los Angeles gangland leader Stanley Tookie
Williams, who was executed by the US State of California this morning,
have vowed that they will struggle on to have his name cleared of the 4
murders for which he was killed, and to continue his work against
violence.

Williams, founder of the notorious Crips gang, always denied the 4 brutal
slayings in 1979 which put him on death row. But he admitted openly to
having led a criminal life and to his involvement in lethal gang
culture.<>P> Backed by a host of church, civic and national figures -
including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Rev Jesse Jackson - Williams
appeals to have the questionable evidence against him reconsidered, and
latterly clemency, were all rejected.

The final decision rested with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who says he
agonised over the decision. He was under huge political pressure in an
election year to be seen to support the death penalty, which is losing
support among many ordinary Americans.

Having recanted in 1993, Tookie Williams co-wrote ten books to try to wean
young, urban, mainly black youngsters off the gang culture. He also
recorded interviews and messages from prison, counselling individuals and
communicating to rallies.

In their petition for mercy, his supporters wrote: "This is about
redemption, rehabilitation and hope. It is about a single man, a prisoner
for a quarter century, who found purpose while facing death by execution."

In its ruling on 11 October 2005, the US Supreme Court disregarded nine
Ninth Circuit Court judges assertion that the District Attorney at
Williams original trial had employed "reprehensible and unconstitutional"
racist tactics, using animal-in-a-jungle metaphors to refer to him and to
the South Central environment in which he lived.

Questions were also raised about the confession which led to his
circumstantial conviction, resulting in clemency for the accuser, and
forensics linking him to a murder weapon in the 1979 case.

But Mr Schwarzenegger, star of the Terminator movies, said he had looked
at the evidence admissible and could find no grounds for clemency.

The Crips were created by Williams and his friend Raymond Washington in
Los Angeles in 1971. There are now 12,000 Crips, 5,000 Bloods and 30,000
Latino gangsters in LA alone, reports the BBC. About 250 gang-related
murders take place in Los Angeles every year.

The 'Tookie' Williams case and execution is likely to prove to be a
defining moment in the struggle against the death penalty, which its
detractors - including the Catholic Church - say is morally wrong and
unjust.

There are also long-standing allegations that it is used
disproportionately against poor, black people. One slogan deployed outside
the governors mansion in California was "those without the capital get the
punishment."

Although the death penalty is backed by the religious write, a huge number
of Christians have vigorously opposed it - claiming that a misreading of
biblical texts and the importation of revenge and hatred into doctrinal
assertions have been used to justify something contrary to the teachings
of Jesus, who himself was executed by the then Roman state for subversion.

Biblical theologian Walter Wink has spent a lifetime examining "the myth
of redemptive violence," the idea that justified killing makes society
secure. He argues that the Gospel message stands in complete contradiction
to this ideology, perpetuated by popular culture and mainstream politics.

In his final apology for the life he led before what he described as his
redemption, Stanley 'Tookie' Williams wrote: "I pray that one day my
apology will be accepted. I also pray that your suffering, caused by gang
violence, will soon come to an end ....."

Those who backed him, and who are mourning today, say that they will work
on to ensure that this dream comes closer to reality.

[Books by Walter Wink available in association with Ekklesia: Jesus and
Non-violence: A Third Way; When the Powers Fall: Reconciliation in the
Healing of Nations. News stories on Ekklesia: Schwarzenegger allows
termination of reformed gang leader 12/12/05; World cities to declare
against death penalty; Christians heartened by US decline in death
sentences; A Call for Reckoning: Religion and the Death Penalty; Churches
plead with Gaddafi for clemency over death sentences; Campaigning nun to
speak in London against death penalty]

(source: Ekklesia)

************************

Terminator In Deed----My brother died in June. Taken by cancer. Too young.
Full of hope and possibility.


Last night another cancer killed a man about the same age. The
paraphernalia familiar. IVs and gurneys. Lethal drugs dripping into his
veins. Ending a life that had found redemption. But this time the cancer
was on the outside.

Racism killed Tookie Williams.

I don't know enough about his case to argue the fine points, but I do know
that Charlie Manson is still incarcerated in a California prison. One man
is white, the other Black. I do know that Williams grew up in black ghetto
where gang violence was a response to screaming inequity and lack of
possibility.

So we punish the victim. We repeat the act that we condemn him for and
congratulate ourselves on closure and righteousness.

Our governator feels he is able to decide the moral and legal culpability
of a human life. What if the lack of remorse he cited in his refusal to
grant clemency is really based on innocence? Has he no self doubt? Would
that make him a girlie man? Or a human being? So many cases on death row
in Illinois were found to be faulty that the governor there emptied the
holding cells, aware of his inability to make such judgments.

And what of the death penalty itself. It is not a deterrent. Only a
perverse sick spectacle.

We are one of the few nations left on earth who still conduct executions.
Who continue to put to death people who have actually been reformed and
changed by their time in prison. No one benefits from an inhuman practice
that institutionalizes the very crime it is supposed to be punishing. It
makes us all killers.

How different in the end is our governor from Tookie Williams? Yesterday
he committed murder and by his own report he feels no remorse.

(source: Naomi Foner, Huffington Post)

********************

Tookie Dies, So Arnold Can Live


Nobody should be surprised that Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied clemency
to Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Politicians rarely suffer for taking the
toughest possible stance on questions of criminal justice, and Arnold is
in quite enough trouble with his Republican Party grassroots not to want
to go looking for more -- which is what he would have been doing if he had
decided the one-time leader of the Crips deserved a second chance at life.

That said, the five-page statement released by his office today is
staggering in its callousness and cynical disregard for anything other
than the need to find arguments to bolster a foregone conclusion. Tookie
Williams' clemency petition was based on the argument that he is a
redeemed man -- as evidenced by his output of speeches, articles and
children's books over the past decade urging young people away from the
destructive gang life he led, and by the peace protocols he has authored
that have been used to broker truces between street gangs from New Jersey
to South Africa. He has been nominated numerous times for the Nobel Peace
Prize, notably by a group of Swiss parliamentarians, and earlier this year
was awarded a Presidential Call to Service Award for demonstrating what
George W. Bush, in the citation, called "the outstanding character of
America."

How does Schwarzenegger respond to all that?

First, he says the awards and nominations do not carry "persuasive
weight." (Actually, he relegates this to a mere footnote, without so much
as discussing the fact that Williams has a dedicated international
following of prestigious supporters.)

Secondly, he says Williams' anti-gang activities are "hard to assess," but
that the continuing pervasiveness of gang violence "leads one to question
the efficacy of Williams' message." This is an astonishing line of
argument: essentially, it says that because Tookie Williams has not
single-handedly ended all gang violence everywhere, he deserves to die.

And that's not all. Predictably, Schwarzenegger berates Williams for
failing to acknowledge guilt in the four murders for which he was sent to
Death Row. But he also dismisses the written apology Williams issued in
1997 for the damage done by himself and his fellow Crips as mere "innuendo
and inference" -- even though Williams has been entirely true to his
concluding vow "to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions."

Most staggering of all is the argument that Williams may not in fact be a
reformed character at all. The document says this judgment is based on "a
close look at Williams' post-arrest and post-conviction conduct," but it
provides just two instances. The first is a plan Williams made -- but
never carried out -- to break out of jail before his trial. We're talking
about a non-incident from 25 years ago, more than a decade before Williams
claimed to have turned his life around.

The second instance is the dedication Williams included in his 1998 book
Life In Prison -- to "Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata
Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard
Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the
countless other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish
oppression of living behind bars".

The governor's statement comments: "The mix of individuals on this list is
curious. Most have violent pasts and some have been convicted of
committing heinous murders, including the killing of law enforcement." In
particular, the inclusion of George Jackson, founder of the Black
Guerrilla Family prison gang, "is a significant indicator that Williams is
not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a
legitimate means to address societal problems."

It says something about the quality of Schwarzenegger's argument that he
had to go foraging in a book dedication to find even a hint of dirt
against the man he has decided to send to the gallows tonight. The
argument is absurd, anyway: Williams is merely espousing the well-worn
line that men of color imprisoned by a predominantly white social order
are worthy of support, regardless of the circumstances. You don't have to
agree with Williams' point of view to see there is absolutely no criminal
intent in it.

The real truth of Schwarzenegger's document is inadvertently demonstrated
by its very absurdity: that there are no good arguments to deny the
genuineness of Tookie Williams' redemption. That, in turn, tells us just
how political the clemency decision is: Arnold has a career to
resuscitate, so Tookie has to die.

(source: Huffington Post, Dec. 12)






MISSISSIPPI:

What do we accomplish when we get together and kill a guy?


Unless there are some last-minute heroics from somebody, somewhere, John
B. Nixon will be executed Wednesday at Parchman.

Nixon is being executed because he put a pistol to Virginia Tucker's head
on Jan. 2, 1985, and pulled the trigger.

Gov. Haley Barbour announced Sunday he would not grant Nixon clemency.

What good it is actually going to do to execute Nixon, I don't know.

When Nixon committed this crime, we were just 16 months, to the day,
removed from having executed Jimmy Lee Gray.

That execution was still fresh in the minds of most Mississippians. Yet,
it didn't serve as a deterrent to Nixon when he was plotting to kill
Tucker. All he was thinking about was receiving money from Tucker's
husband to do the job.

And if there was an execution that would stick in your mind as a
deterrent, it would be the execution of Gray.

On Sept. 2, 1983, officials had to clear the room 8 minutes after the gas
was released when Gray's desperate gasps for air repulsed witnesses,
according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

His attorney criticized state officials for clearing the room when the
inmate was still alive.

Noted death penalty defense attorney David Bruck said, "Jimmy Lee Gray
died banging his head against a steel pole in the gas chamber while the
reporters counted his moans -11, according to the Associated Press."

Later it was revealed that the executioner, Barry Bruce, was drunk.

Is that what kind of society we are?

Are we so consumed with revenge that we resort to cruel and unusual
punishment to discipline those we send to prison?

I think we need to examine the reasons why we have the death penalty.

If it is for a deterrent, then we aren't being honest with ourselves
concerning its effectiveness.

If we are using the death penalty as revenge, then, at least we are being
honest. However, at that point we are no better for having killed someone
in anger than the people we purport to be punishing.

Nixon is a bad man, there is no question. But his death at the hands of
the state of Mississippi isn't going to make things all better, and it
isn't going to dissuade someone else from committing murder in the future.

I did hear someone once say that the only way to make the death penalty a
deterrent for crimes, such as Nixon's, is to drag the convicted out onto
the courtyard lawn immediately after the trial and hang them.

>From my point of view, what we are doing now is akin to courtyard
hangings. We invite the media to come watch to make sure the convicted is
killed humanely (whatever that is). Then we scream from the rooftops that
we have eliminated one more bad person.

That, we may have done. But at what price.

Don't get me wrong, if something terrible were to happened to my wife or
daughter, I would be the first one out the door trying to exact revenge
for what happened. But that would be an emotional response, one that I
know would come should anything that horrible actually happen.

But the role of the state is to step back and take a more calm and
intelligent look at the situation.

And that is exactly what we need to do now.

We need to re-examine our philosophy on the death penalty and decide what
kind of society we want to have.

Because Wednesday's killing isn't going to stop the next potential
murderer from committing his crime.

(source: Delta Democrat Times (Ross Reily is editor of the Delta Democrat)

*********************

Justice weighs stay for Nixon----Convicted Mississippi hit man scheduled
to be executed on Wednesday


Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a champion of the death penalty, is
weighing whether to grant Mississippi condemned killer John B. Nixon Sr.'s
request for a stay of execution.

Nixon, 77, is scheduled to die Wednesday by lethal injection at the
Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman for the 1985 contract murder of
Virginia Tucker, a 45-year-old mother of three. He has been on death row
since March 1986.

Nixon's attorney, David Clark, said he is aware Scalia is a strong
supporter of the death penalty, but he hopes Scalia's philosophy that
juries, not judges, should decide whether a person is sentenced to death
will help his client. He hopes Scalia will be sympathetic to Nixon's
argument that the jury that sentenced Nixon had improper information.

Clark said prosecutors were wrong to tell jurors that Nixon had a history
of violent crime before he shot Tucker at close range. Nixon had been
convicted of statutory rape for having sex with a minor, but Clark said
there was no evidence violence was involved.

While Nixon is awaiting Scalia's decision, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 51,
was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 2:01 a.m. CST today at San
Quentin Prison for murdering four people during 2 holdups in 1979.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday denied clemency to
Williams, the founder of the Crips gang. The California Supreme Court also
declined to block the execution.

If Nixon is executed, he will be the oldest person in the United States
put to death since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. His
execution will be the first in Mississippi since December 2002.

Nixon was hired by Tucker's ex-husband, Elster J. Ponthieux, who was
sentenced to life in prison for his role in the plot. Nixon was aided by
his 2 sons and another man who received lighter sentences.

Gov. Haley Barbour on Sunday said he would not grant clemency to Nixon.

Tucker's son, Joey Ponthieux, told WJTV-Channel 12 on Monday that he has
confidence in the judicial and gubernatorial decisions being made
regarding Nixon.

"The depth of sorrow and loss that I and my family feel from my beloved
mother's absence cannot be adequately put into words," Ponthieux said.

Scalia, who hears all emergency appeals from Mississippi, Texas and
Louisiana, has been given a copy of a letter to Barbour written by former
Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson that asked that Nixon's
death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment.

Anderson voted to turn down Nixon's appeal to the Mississippi Supreme
Court. But he now says Nixon was poorly represented at his trial because
his attorneys, who had to defend another capital murder case the same
month, were overworked.

Anderson said the "most glaring facts" about Nixon's request for clemency
is his age and the fact that he has been on death row for about 20 years.

"Under those circumstances, he has sent more prayers to the Lord than I
ever had to do, or chosen to do," Anderson wrote.

State Rep. Erik Fleming, D-Clinton, and Washington-based Amnesty
International USA were among those issuing statements on Monday
criticizing Barbour's decision to not grant Nixon clemency.

While Nixon's killing of Tucker "was heinous, it is even more heinous for
this state to continue the practice of execution in the name of justice,"
Fleming said. "As a legislator, I have no problem appropriating the funds
necessary to make sure that Nixon spends the rest of his natural life in
prison..."

Barbour said he found nothing to convince him that granting clemency was
justified. "The real tragedy is that justice in this case has been delayed
for more than 20 years," he said.

(source: Jackson Clarion-Ledger)